Like last week’s stress post, I’m not going to delve deeply into why sleep is so important. I’ve done it before, and doing so again would simply take up valuable space that’s better used for action items – for actual sleep hacks that you can put into effect immediately. Just rest assured that it’s crucial to health, longevity, immunity, recovery from training, cognition, aptitude while operating vehicles and/or machinery, insulin sensitivity and, well, do I need to go on? If you want to enjoy your limited time on the planet, you better get your Zs.

Despite the long list of health benefits, sleep is one of those things that people skimp on, whether by necessity (work, traffic, kids, busy schedules) or because they figure they can simply “power through it”. The supposed ability to lower our sleep requirements through sheer will is pervasive. “Tough it out” is a popular slogan, as are “Sleep is for the weak” or “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Then there’s Virgil’s “Death’s brother, Sleep” (or, alternately, Nas’ “Sleep is the cousin of death” – thanks, Worker Bee). What we end up with, then, is a nation of overworked, overly fatigued men, women, students, and even children shambling through days dotted with Starbucks Ventis and ridiculous energy drinks. If you count yourself among their numbers, or perhaps you just want better sleep, read on for some tips and tricks:

Light Issues – The Usual

Our circadian clocks govern our sleepiness, and circadian clocks are extremely responsive to – and even dependent on – environmental light. Managing your exposure to light, especially blue light throughout the day and night can help you get to sleep at a normal time. The hormonal flux that controls our sleep schedule is complex, but sticking to ancestral light exposure norms should take care of most of it:

Sleep in a Dark Room

Total darkness is best. That means turning off the blinking DVR, using a towel to block the light streaming in under the door, flipping your alarm clock around, and drawing the blinds. If these aren’t doable, think about wearing an eye mask or draping a dark cloth over your face. You may find that such drastic measures aren’t totally necessary (the moon’s light doesn’t seem to bother me, for example), but it’s definitely worth pursuing if you feel your sleep is lacking.

Read Before Bed

Instead of reaching for the laptop or the remote, why not grab a book? For one, the blue light streaming from the laptop or LCD screen will suppress your natural melatonin production, and for two, reading is a relaxing activity that nonetheless requires active engagement of your cognitive skills. Working your brain can be tiring, while watching something is usually just passive.

Embrace Candlelit Dinners

Candlelit dinners aren’t just romantic; they actually promoted better sleep and more recovery from workouts for reader JD Moyer, who found that ditching all artificial lighting after dark (including computers and TV) in favor of candles made an enormous difference in both his and his wife’s lives. This is likely due to the fact that fire, especially the tiny flames lighting up a simple candle, emits little to no blue light. You know how candle light is “soft” and somehow soothing? There’s a physiological reason for that.

Get Some Exposure to Blue Light in the Morning and During the Day

When you get up in the morning, head outside and greet the day – and the blue sky overhead (if the season permits). Go for a walk at lunch for a bit more exposure. Thankfully, some offices are beginning to employ blue light-enriched overhead lights, which has been shown to increase worker alertness. This is more about normalizing your circadian rhythm and preparing for the rest of the day, rather than using light to fix sleep deprivation-induced fogginess, but it’ll help there in a pinch.

Install F.lux on Your Computer

Wear Orange Safety Goggles

Orange safety goggles may look silly, but they filter out blue light. Might be worth trying if nothing else is working.

Supplements and Other Hacks

Smart supplementation and the implementation of modern technology can do wonders. It may not be how Grok lived, but we face problems that our ancestors never had to cope with.

Get Your Leptin in Order

Sleep quality and duration are strongly linked to low leptin and leptin resistance. If you recall from my posts on leptin and carb refeeds, I suggested going lower fat and higher carb on leptin refeed days, as carbs have the biggest effect on leptin levels. Avoiding excess omega-6, sugar, and grains should take care of leptin resistance. Just stick to sweet potatoes, squash, and other safe starches for your carb-heavy days, and try to have your carbs an hour or two before bed.

Check Your Thiamine Intake

Thiamine, found in meat, especially pork and animal offal, has a big effect on sleep patterns: a deficiency can lead to poor sleep. Make sure you’re eating enough thiamine-rich foods. Yes, this means you may have to start eating more bacon. I’m sorry. Pair your pig flesh and chicken liver with sunflower seeds, which are also high in thiamine.

Eat Your (Beef) Heart Out

Taurine is a non-essential amino acid, but dietary taurine is still very useful. New research suggests that it plays an important role in brain function, specifically with regards to the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA, activation of which is linked to sleepiness. It’s odd that taurine is included in most energy drinks, since it seems far more likely to sedate than energize. Eat more animal hearts, which are very high in taurine. Whole Foods usually carries frozen boxes of turkey and beef (grass-fed, too) hearts for $1.99/lb, at least in Los Angeles.

Take Magnesium (and/or Zinc)

ZMA is a popular supplement combining zinc and magnesium for workout recovery and sleep improvement. Natural Calm, as popularized by Robb Wolf, is a high quality magnesium supplement that many people use for sleep support. Eating leafy greens like spinach, and nuts like almonds for magnesium, and meat/shellfish for zinc are the best ways to obtain either mineral, of course. If you opt out of nuts and greens and choose supplements, stick to magnesiums and zincs that end in “-ate” (don’t take supplements made strictly of oxide, although blends are fine).

Take Melatonin

Melatonin is the primary sleep hormone. We generally produce it endogenously, but sometimes life gets in the way. If that’s the case, exogenous melatonin taken about 30 minutes before bed can help you get to sleep. Less is more with this stuff, although more has been known to lead to extremely vivid dreams. Just stick to small doses, about 0.3 mg to 1 mg to start, and be cautious: it is a hormone.

Get Cooler

Some people associate warmth with sleepiness, but I’m the opposite. I need crisp, cool air if I’m going to get a good night’s sleep. If I can’t control the ambient temperature, in a pinch I’ll rub an ice pack on my inner wrists or dip my feet in cool water to (seemingly) lower my temperature a bit so I can get sleepy. It works for me. Try making your environment cooler and/or making your body cooler.

Try Guided Meditation

Yeah, yeah, it sounds cheesy, but I’m into it. I just tried it over the weekend right as I was going to sleep and it was fantastic. I tried the Moodstreams podcast, specifically the “Down the River” meditation. You have to listen to him promote his products at the start, but the actual “trip” is totally worth it. It got me into that weird half dream, half awake brain state (which was fun) and I just slipped off to sleep without even realizing it. Highly recommended. Here’s his blog, which contains links to the podcasts on iTunes.

Try Esther Gokhale’s “Long Lying”

This recommendation is buried in my sleep posture post from way back, but it bears repeating. I still make sure to do it every time I lie down for a nap or full on sleep: You touch ground with your sacrum, lay your palms on the ground, and slowly lower yourself back, taking care to actively lengthen your spine – vertebrae by vertebrae – by pushing through your hands. Works like a charm, every single time.

Get a Massage or Foam Roll Yourself

Ideally, we’d all have access to stout Swedish maids with strong butter churning hands for nightly massages, but in the real world, foam rollers will do the trick (when your significant other isn’t up to it). You may not slip off to sleep while foam rolling yourself (if you’re doing it right, you’ll be in pain), but you’ll release a lot of physical and mental tension that should make sleep easier and more satisfying. Do ten minutes of foam rolling before bed, focusing on the legs and upper back.

Have a Sleep Routine

We are creatures of habit, and behavior, not just environmental, external cues, helps set our body’s rhythms. Take all or some of the suggestions in this post and put together a comprehensive pre-sleep ritual that you try to stick to every day. Maybe it’s turning off the lights at 6 and switching to candles, followed by a cup of herbal tea, a quick massage, and a good book before bed. Taken individually, each item might have an effect on your sleep, but taken as a whole, they become a standard ritual that you do every night to prepare your body for sleep and that acts as a cue to your circadian clock.

Fix Your Stress

Everyone knows they need better sleep, but I’m not convinced they actually know it. At least, they don’t act like it. The preceding represent some pretty simple, basic tips, tricks, and hacks that anyone can try without too much investment. Try a few out and see how they affect your sleep, or lack thereof, and be sure to let me know how it goes in the comment section! Also, if I’ve missed anything, let me know. I’m always looking for more ways to improve!

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Imagine you’re George Clooney. Take a moment to admire your grooming and wit. Okay, now imagine someone walks up to you and asks, “What’s your name?” You say, “I’m George Clooney.” Or maybe you say, “I’m the Clooninator!” You don’t say “I’m George of George Clooney Sells Movies Blog” and you certainly don’t say, “I’m Clooney Weight Loss Plan”. So while spam is technically meat, it ain’t anywhere near Primal. Please nickname yourself something your friends would call you.

The reason the moon’s light doesn’t bother you is likely because neuron’s of the suprachiasmatic nuclei have a higher threshold to light intensity than does our classic visual system, and this threshold is higher than that of the intensity of moonlight/starlight. Thus the light we can see is sometimes dim enough that it will not affect our sleep/wake rhythms. I find it fascinating though, that our bodies “know” that it is nighttime, regardless of moon and stars shining. Also cool is that these neuron’s track changes in light intensity, particularly the intensities present in natural dawn and dusk times. I’m thinking that gradually dimming the lights in my apartment would be helpful – telling my body that it’s time to sleep.

Have you tried sleeping with the child, allowing the infant to nurse while you are still asleep, or at least groggy? This is how Ms Grok would have done it! And it is how my mother nursed me, she said it was no trouble at all, very peaceful. The idea of banishing an infant to a place separate from Mum is surely ‘cruel and unusual’, and I cannot imagine how it was ever adopted. (Perhaps to copy the very rich, who traditionally banished their children to a distant nursery and a wet-nurse). Could you not trawl the net for safe ways to do this – the correct sleeping-posture – and find an old mid-wife who might advise? Good luck.

So what about STAYING asleep? I usually have little trouble falling asleep at a reasonable time in the evening, but wake up about 4-5 hours later and have real problems getting back to slumberland. I obviously haven’t been on-line at that point or had coffee or… Any suggestions for this one?

I do a lot of these already, and it really does help. I’m going to get f.lux installed today. I sleep in a bedroom that is pitch black once I turn out the lights. I have a few windows that are covered with blinds, but I pull them up slightly just to have the windows cracked and let cool air circulate. I have found that this often results in very restful sleep, it’s much better than having a fan pushing air around. This has led to me waking to a sore an dry throat. I have Melatonin on stock usually, but there’s only one brand by NOW that works for me. I’ve tried ZMA in the past and it works pretty good, so I need to look into it again. I definitely want to invest in some blue lights, maybe I can find a nice one for my desk for the mornings.I’m going to buy a foam roller this weekend as well. I know stretching is very beneficial to a good nights rest. I noticed I do sleep better with a good 10 minute stretch, focusing on legs mostly. It’s been said sleep is the number 2 most important factor in keeping healthy and losing fat. Diet being number one for obvious reasons.

Earthing is vital for sound sleep. Your room is full of low-frequency radiation that agitates your nervous system. Grounding the body to the Earth eliminates the problem. You might ask, “Do I have to buy an expensive device?” No, you can make your own easily by following the instructions at http://www.wikihow.com/Make-an-Earthing-Device . Earthing has lots of other benefits, besides sound sleep. Have a look at Mark’s previous post on the subject. This post on “17 ways to improve your sleep” has been online for a year and a half. I can’t believe that I’m the first person to mention Earthing!

In UK (so presumably everywhere else) there are many wake-up dawn simulator lights available from Phillips, Pure and Lumie to mention a couple. They simulate dusk and dawn by gradually dimming and switching off the light at night and the opposite in the morning. We have used them primarily for waking up for several years to avoid that sudden/startled waking from an alarm. We are almost always awake from the light before the alarm goes off.

Some have “daylight” bulbs and some use LEDs so check what you like ideally before buying. The Lumies we have use daylight (incandescent) bulbs and seem to be more gradual than the LEDs which the PURE “Twilight” uses.

Um, don’t ever apologise for telling us to eat more bacon!!! Great post, thanks for the tips, we moved recently and I haven’t been sleeping the same. I think it may be due to more light coming into the bedroom so may need to invest in a sleep mask

Sleeping in the dark may be impossible due to house construction and necessity to have some air to breathe in the night (especially when window is cloned when it’s freezing outside). Any tips, on the cheap side, for both darkness, outside noise and fresh air?

Earthing: tried, helps with circulation but not with sleep.

No blue lights in the evening: yellow lights are really depressing and unproductive (a lot of things have to be done in the evening). As for candlelight, one have to have relaxed life for this and no fire alarms.

And most attention was paid to falling asleep. There are other parts: staying asleep, restful sleep, sleep without nightmares and pain management (not everybody is at their prime). Tips will be appreciated.

From what I could find, when all described in the article doesn’t help much, the things left to try are: improve nutrition (juicing, own fermented food, edible clays, quark/flaxseed oil, going Primal as far as budget allows), get full vitamins and minerals supplements (A.Saul on niacin and vitamins related), try aloe and honey mix (Father Romano Zago), try to go through detox (bowels, kidneys, liver cleanse, edible clays and bentonite baths), get fluoride free water, sun, get lymph flow (deep breathing, rebounder in gentlest mode). In short, compensate deficiencies and restore what can be restored.

Would like to exercise until I drop for a better sleep, but osteoarthritis and what looks like CFIDS don’t help. Any tips for the people not in their prime, in cold climate and on the budget? Other than in the article.

I have had tinnitus my entire life – I was once given a white-noise generator (like a hearing aid that generates white noise) which is supposed to train your brain to ignore persistent noises, as it’s supposed to. It didn’t work for me but it does for others so it might be worth a visit to your doctor for a referral to the ENT department – or whatever the equivalent would be in your country! (I’m in the UK). As for sleep, I can sleep through it now – I played music as a kid.

I really would try cutting out grains at least (if Primal is too large a jump for now) – especially as you have osteoarthritis.

As for sleeping in the dark – I use a sleep-mask – all of £2 so cheap enough. It’s only fabric and elastic if you wanted to make one in any case. It’s quiet where I live but I camp often at festivals etc – earplugs work for me to cut out the noise outside. It does tend to make the tinnitus seem amplified though, so you’d need to work out what you can live with better. The music option would help with both.

Fresh night air – all I can suggest is thick pjs and an open window! Or perhaps a walk (rather than the full on exercise you mention) before bed. It might be enough to sate the fresh air wish and the exercise wish all at once. Super cheap too!

Just try something – anything. Sometimes we spend far to much time searching for the perfect answer instead of just trying ‘maybes’ out! Good luck and sweet dreams!

I had been having trouble sleeping for weeks. I recently learned about magnesium which is a natural remedy for soothing stress. It calms the nerves as it is something that often prevents you from getting sleep. There are many ways that a good night sleep affects all parts of your life and you should learn how to cope.
Check out this article that really helped: http://www.vivamagonline.com/sleepless-in-canada/

Great article!
You should try a Sleepshield. Its supposed to block the blue light that keeps us up at night but I use it as a screen protector as well. I purchased a SleepShield for my iphone, ipad and macbook air and it seriously works. Lately I am waking up feeling more refreshed after using my iPad late into the night.http://sleepshield.com

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